I liked AceBlokes life/pet sim thingy so I thought I might try something along those lines.

I present to you simply "Gootchi"..

Gootchi are small animals you raise from eggs. When you get a new Gootchi egg it will randomly decide what style of egg you get. Once you get your egg it is a matter of waiting for it to hatch.

You will want to check up on your Gootchi egg from time to time, because once your Gootchi hatches it is going to be hungry.

When a Gootchi hatches it is only it in Metmorphis stage and will be a small critter. You will have to take care of your Gootchi, Wash your Gootchi, Play with your Gootchi and pet your Gootchi.

(Does anyone else feel dirty yet from reading that last part? I know I do.)

Anyways, if your Gootchi survives it's Metmorphis stage, it will grow up into a norma Gootchi pet. From there, there isn't much else aside from it dying or living.

What I'd like to do:

Gootchi will be born with unique tastes. Every single Gootchi will love a different kind of food and hate a different kind of food.

Lots of different Gootchi. I got some pixel work for about 3 Different Metmorphis stages and 13 different full grown Gootchi.

The Gootchi will interact with one another, talk with one another and become friends with some and enemies with others.

The Gootchi will poop. And you will have to clean it up.

The player will play the role of a Gootchi owner, but not the actual Gootchi. You will have money (How you earn it I have no idea yet..) and you will need that money to send your Gootchi to school, buy the Gootchi food and buy it stuff like toys and medicin.

People will be able to pit their Gootchi head to head in mini games like races and even arena style combat.

Nah I plan on making it kind of like AceBlokes game where they all chill out on one big screen.

I am unsure how I am going to have that done yet, and how I Want it to look.

Or maybe each player can have their own personal screen and sometimes other Gootchi will just like drop on by and talk to them... Who knows.

BTW my avatar is actully a Gootchi..

I decided I will more then likley make it so each Gootchi will also have their own intrestes like Baseball, Football, Reading, Videogames, ect. So when two Gootchi encounter one another and talk, they might be really into each other, or may dislike one another.

Maybe I'll make it so if two Gootchi like, become really really good friends the owners can like, mate them or something. (insert porno music here.)

To make it look more like a Digial Pet I am thinking about some sort of like LCD-esc overlay too.

Soundsp retty cool. The first thing that came to mind was the hair style that sounds exactly like that(unsure on how to spell). When you make it, can you possibly make it so you don't have to check up on it every hour? Maybe every day or so, or better yet, "pausing" so your pet doesn't starve while you're doing other stuff...Or what about some kind of "Gootchi Hotel" that takes care of your pet while you're gone..

It's a shame the interpreted nature of BYOND, and its use of single-precision floating point, precludes me from doing something along these lines. When Creatures was out I had an idea that Norns could become tool users with a slightly different associative model and major changes to the environment.

A remake of Creatures along different lines could be quite fruitful, actually. It would require some key things, though:

Biochemical reactions would have to be based on an internal system, not genetics.

A mock-chemistry would be needed to describe how each "molecule" could become another one, which direction the reaction favored, how much energy would be needed on each side of the equation, and how fast it would happen.

Genes would then define organs that could artificially cause chemical reactions by applying energy. The genes would control how much of a reaction went on (i.e., organ size and function).

A little hardwiring for the brains would need to be done. This would include basic drives and brain layout, though the ability of certain lobes to associate--and perhaps their number and an ability to split up functionality--could be genetic. For example, if each lobe had a degree of connectivity (and positive/negative responses) to each other, then the evolution of a new lobe could be beneficial and could gradually hone those connections. (To speed up this process, a bit of Lamarckian tinkering would probably be in order, or else the mutability of the new genes would have to be pretty high.)

A wider associative model would be necessary. No longer would all food simply be "food" to the brain, but the brain would process that an item is 1) food, 2) a carrot, 3) orange, 4) found in the ground, 5) tasty, 6) pleasingly filling... etc.

Digestion might also need to be hardwired to an extent, to make it harder to injest certain chemicals directly but easier to access their base compounds. Put more simply, chemicals should be allowed to pass the barrier from stomach to bloodstream at a certain rate, higher for simple chemicals like amino acids than for complex ones. Stomach acid could be a pseudo-chemical controlling this process, with the stomach organ handling other enzyme-type reactions. Without the stomach acid, much of the nutrition would be lost to waste and there'd also be a greater danger of poisoning, to this could easily be a genetic control.

Most of that is just my thinking out loud, but I suspect someday someone will run with a similar idea and pick up where Creatures left off.

Well, being able to customize your Gootchi would be cool. Unlockable/buyable instruments,hats,jewelry,etc. I say one screen with your own Gootchi...sort of like a house, and you can be invited to another Gootchi owners "house" so your Gootchies could play with each other (lol).

*Note #2: When Gootchi die they leave behind a Gootchi Skull.. Some very rare breeds of Gootchi will h ave a evil streak in them and enjoy eating the skulls of dead Gootchi.
Gootchi will die on their own, but if someone else leaves a Gootchi too hungry for too long, it might try and eat another Gootchi.. so be warned..

I have been sitting here trying to think about what I should like.. call the money used in Gootchi. I was thinking perhaps in the spirit of Pokemon Id use like Gootchi Gold or something. (For those of you who don't know, I believe Pokemon used PokeDollars or some fungus like that.)

I like the LCD screen idea. Do you mean you want all player's Gootchies in the same area or a player's Gootchi in the same area as wild Gootchi or something? It might get a little crowded with all players Gootchies in the same area.

Thats what I plan on doing. I am unsure if I am going to keep the world Panoramic like that or make it bigger or not, but the world will be later re-designed to fit more Gootchis.

I decided with having the Gootchis all being on one map is I want them to interact with one another, when you are there or not. Who knows, you might come home to discover your Gootchi made a new friend, enemy, or got so annoyed it killed and ate another Gootchi...